Nov 10: a day to remember. Or maybe to forget; but then it began with Dad completely and quite uncharacteristically forgetting himself and causing an incident. Which he now professes that he can’t remember.
It goes like this: around 9 o’clock Dad’s keyholder tries to ring me only I’m driving so I can’t take the call. When I’ve arrived and before I can respond, the care agency rings - at a time when I know it means there’s a problem; usually that he won’t let the carer over the threshold. This time I’m told that he has wandered across the road in his underwear, the keyholder has seen him and tried to encourage him back home – whereupon Dad makes some kind of sexual advance to her. The lady is duly perturbed, makes him return, and then rings someone for help, I think a lady from church who also knows Dad. The care agency is on the case and so is the CPN, as you’d expect, but then it’s what they get paid for. That two ladies from church agree at no notice to sit with him for a couple of hours to make sure he doesn’t do any more stupid things is a classic instance of Christians going the extra mile. Meanwhile I’m at work trying to organise a bit of live music, partly in order to publicise the work I do with singing and dementia. Later I will need to drive to the coast for a conference; fortunately and most unusually I have a passenger with me who not only can take calls on my mobile while I’m at the wheel, she is a former CPN herself and can comment knowledgeable on the situation down in Grottsville as it develops. Both the care agency and Dad’s CPN ring en route and my passenger’s expertise proves is invaluable.
Knowing that she’s an unbeliever, for want of a better word, I tell her she’s just had proof that there is a God. On the one day I really need a passenger to take my calls, otherwise I’d have to stop and make myself late, he not only provides me with one but a passenger with exactly right credentials. Aware that I’m winding her up, she follows the logic through. If God so engineered matters that I find myself driving a passenger just when I need one, am I also implying that he fixed it for my Dad to make a pass at his neighbour? Fifteen all. But as I then remark, Christians think like this all the time. On those good days, when everything surprisingly works out, all the lights are at green, you get the last parking space and you bump into an old friend you haven’t met in years who gives you a vital piece of information that un-snarls a situation that’s been snarled up since forever, well there’s Providence aka God doing its thing, shaping your end. They call it "God-incidences", a coinage that makes my toes curl.
So what of those other days when you get stuck in road works and turn up late for a meeting where you’re giving a presentation, only your laptop won’t talk to the projector, then your wife rings to say the cat’s been run over – what was Providence doing then – sleeping on the job? Trying to teach you a lesson? Punishing you for going on that porn site the night before? Suppose you’d been on the porn site the night before that other really good day as well – it doesn’t work, doesn’t it? The example I give my passenger is more succinct than this of course, I’ve got some thinking time right now. The substantial point is that Christians talk glibly about God being at work in positive situations and ignore the fact that many situations are basically shit.
It occurs to me that I am now the son of a dirty old man. Let’s hope it’s not hereditary, says the famous Eccles when I convey this thought to him
Underneath the levity I am worried not that the mental health team will section my dad but in case they don’t. My passenger, who has been in such situations many times, assures me that they are following procedure but that there can be only one outcome. Dad clearly cannot be trusted in public and in that sense is not safe; I want him on a ward where they’ll look after him but also watch his every move, and find out why his condition has worsened so quickly in the last few weeks. The phone eventually rings again at around seven, with a young psychiatrist clearly relieved at not having to explain to me what a section is or persuade me that it’s my dad’s best interests. He wants me to persuade him to go voluntarily, and I promise to try. Otherwise they’ll have to use strong-arm tactics, which will be traumatic for him and another potential risk.
In the conversation that follows Dad is still worrying about the huge sums of money that are owing to him and which people won’t hand over. I try to make him remember what’s really happened earlier but it’s clear that he can’t or won’t. He knows he’s been across the road to the neighbour’s but not that he wasn’t dressed properly or that he’d made an improper suggestion. Well, he’s a gentleman, and no gentleman would behave in that way, therefore the incident never happened, so of course he can’t remember it. He’s handed reality back to the shop and demanded a refund. He puts up the “just a minute, just a minute” barrier again to assert his control over the situation, but it’s surprisingly fragile and after I’ve stood up to him a couple of times his defences suddenly crumble and he agrees grumpily to go to hospital – for reasons that make no more sense than his earlier defiance, but at least I have a result. I end the call, ring the psychiatrist’s mobile, and Dad is whisked off compliantly in an ambulance while he can still remember that he’s promised me he would go.
In consequence, he goes to hospital in the clothes he has on and with nothing else. I will have the task of packing a case for him before I go to visit him the following day.
At home I find a dozen instances of what happens when Dad resists the carers coming in and tries to manage by himself; he doesn’t. For example: a tub of whipping cream, bought two shopping trips ago and ten days past its sell-by. It’s been in the fridge all that time but tastes disgusting and has to be chucked out. For that matter, two pints of milk which aren’t up to their sell-by have gone off as well, presumably because they spent a good deal of time NOT in the fridge.
He’s been particularly naughty about washing, which Zoe is supposed to do for him only he now reckons he’s “sacked her” for skimping on her hours. So we’ve got a pile of washing on an armchair waiting to be ironed; a load in the machine, which has been stuffed so full it can’t have been washed properly; and a plastic bag full of dirty washing, some of it very pongy, in a wardrobe where carers wouldn’t necessarily think to look. That’s not to mention the mucky pants just strewn on the floor and another pair soaking in the bathroom washbasin which suggest he might have been taken short. I don’t have time to deal with this, Zoe will need to pay another visit.
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